Heart Valve or Heart Bypass Surgery

Group of procedures performed by surgeons with similar skills–open heart operation with replacement of a heart valve (aortic or mitral) with a new mechanical or transplanted valve; or heart valve surgically repaired and not replaced; or open heart operation where non-diseased arteries or veins from the patient are used to bypass severely diseased blood vessels in the heart muscle.

Find the best surgeons — Checkbook has identified as having better-than-average outcomes based on analysis of more than four million surgeries done for hospital inpatients by more than 50,000 surgeons.

How Big Are the Differences

Some surgeons' patients have much higher rates of deaths and other bad outcomes than other surgeons'. This shows the percentage of bad outcomes for the best-performing one-tenth of surgeons, the average surgeon, and the worst performing one-tenth of surgeons.